Following a series of midweek grand finals which threw us a curveball or two on Tuesday, the Goulburn Valley Playing Area’s weekend competitions will take centre stage on Saturday.
Tallygaroopna and Shepparton Golf are well and truly familiar with sharing the biggest stage in our region’s club divisions, having split the past couple of grand finals between them.
The Redlegs seemed to flip a switch halfway through last season, activating an unstoppable rampage which brought Matheson Shield glory to the northern reaches despite the absence of any formal ‘home’ greens at the time.
It seemed, for large parts of this season, that we may have been on a similar course as the Tally train continued to gather steam through the first half of the 2024-25 campaign, but a late stumble proved there was no invincibility after all.
Golf would go on to put a significant dent in the red and green outfit’s armour by prevailing in the major semi-final, earning a week off and forcing the reigning premiers to outlast Kyabram in a preliminary final, setting up a rematch with everything to play for.
Tallygaroopna has suffered the unusual quirk of both its league defeats coming on the Euroa greens, making the fact that same south-eastern club will host Saturday’s decider particularly poignant.
If you ask David Daws, though, there’s certainly no curse down there or anything of the sort.
“I haven’t read into it, but I’m not going to think about that,” Daws said.
“We love the Euroa greens and the facilities there and we know it’ll be perfect for Saturday. That was just a coincidence that those games happened there.
“Our last game (against Golf), we just lacked and it was disappointing the way we played; it’s not very often you have so many people not having a good game at once.
“Hopefully, we can fix that, head into the granny and keep that going after we turned it around against Kyabram.”
Daws asserts that having played a hand in Tallygaroopna’s Edna Harling Shield victory earlier in the week, the table has been set for his side in perfect fashion.
“We’ve certainly created the atmosphere to go into the grand final,” Daws said.
“Hopefully, the representation on Saturday turns up and did what those boys did (on Tuesday): turn up and get on top from the beginning.
“I think everyone’s always going to expect Golf to make the granny and I think it’ll be a really good battle.
“We’ve got faith in ourselves, we believe in ourselves and we believe in each other.
“As a group we’re very tight and we hope that camaraderie and love for playing for each other and the club is what gets us over the line.”
Meanwhile, Golf will have the opportunity to set up a Saturday double at Euroa when its division two contingent squares off with Seymour VRI for the title earlier that morning.
Hill Top Bowling Club will entertain the division three and four deciders, where Shepparton Park has impressively converted a neutral win-loss record into a second place finish and opportunity to topple a dominant Mooroopna side on the big stage.
In the fourth tier, Alexandra and Euroa collide, having also met twice in the previous three weeks, with the High Country outfit looking to complete a trifecta following wins in round 14 and the semi.
Divisions five, six and seven will have teams travel to Shepparton Park, where Kyabram competes in the fifth-tier final against Yea and the seventh tier in an all-Campaspe clash with Rushworth.
Two southern outfits will make the move to contest the division six premiership as Nagambie takes on Violet Town.
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